Shreveport YMCA Honors 9/11 Firefighters & First Responders

It's hard for those of us who experienced the horrifying news of 9/11 to imagine that that was 21 years ago.  There is a generation now that is legal to buy a beer that wasn't even born yet when the attacks on our country were perpetrated 21 years ago.  21 years ago... I was too young to remember details about the Kennedy assasination, but people reference that day as one they remember exactly where they were when they heard the news.  For me, the first day like that was when Elvis died.  Not that I was particularly a huge Elvis fan, but he was an icon my whole life.

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I will never forget the day Paula from accounting at Channel 3 came down the hallway by my audio studio on the second floor of the Production Department at KTBS and said, "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center!"  My first thought was that a pilot of a small private aircraft lost control somehow and flew into the tower.  Because I worked for a TV station,  I walked down the hallway to my friend/boss's office and we watched in horror as I realized much more was going on. Then we watched live as the second plane crashed into the second tower.  We knew then the country was under attack.

September 11th, 2001.  That is a date now equivalent to December 7th, 1941. "A day that will live in infamy."  A day our country was directly attacked. But this differs from Pearl Harbor in that this is the first time an enemy attacked us on American soil.  Cowardice terrorists, (as all terrorists are) hijacked commercial jetliners, and flew them directly into America's symbol of capitalism and prosperity, The World Trade Center. Then, they attacked the center of America's military might, the Pentagon. And by the time passengers took over a fourth hijacked plane, crashing the airliner in a field in Pennsylvania, America had lost over 3,000 innocent lives.

In honor of the firefighters, police officers, and first responders who ran into the towers while thousands were trying to get out, the Shreveport YMCA held it's annual 9/11 Commemorative Stair Climb. The YMCA setup several stairmaster machines in the lobby where particpants recreate climbing the 110 flights of stairs inside the WTC towers.  All funds raised through the Stairclimb event go to local first responders.